An Acceptable Time for Repentance

The Conversion of St. Augustine (c. 1435), Fra Angelico

So the Super Bowl was a few days ago. As seems to happen every year, to my ears at least, it seems as much attention or more is paid to the advertisements as to the actual game. Some people watch the Super Bowl who don't even like football watch just to see the commercials! And those ads showcase a variety of things – from soft drinks to cars to medicine to beer – but they all share a common theme: “This will satisfy you, this will make you happy, so buy this and buy it now.”

There is a kind of urgency about our modern consumer culture that we can’t help but buy into. We want to be healthier, and more likeable, and more attractive, and more financially secure, and we are told that we need those things now, that we must get started now, that we must not waste time, the sooner we begin, the sooner we will get to where we want to go.

It’s funny though that when it comes to the interior aspects of ourselves, the opposite is sometimes true. We know we should be kinder, more patient, more forgiving, more prayerful – but those things are so hard. I remember the story about St. Augustine, who before his conversion to Christianity, recognized his impurity and sexual immorality, and he famously prayed, “Lord, grant me chastity and continence… but not yet.” We sense this urgency about taking care of our bodies and our pocketbooks and our personal lives but when it comes to our souls, we’re content to take it slow.

Ash Wednesday is a great cure for this mindset. By remembering our own mortality, by looking at our lives honestly and reflectively, by undertaking a penitential practice of some kind, we remember how ardently God desires us to return to him. “Even now, return to me with your whole heart,” he says to us through the prophet Joel. “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God,” he says to us through the apostle Paul. There is an urgency that marks the Lord’s desire for us to repent, to be reconciled to him, to be freed from the sins and anxieties that burden us, to be lifted from the passing things of this world and prepared for the next.

Friends, as we come forward to receive our ashes, beginning this Lent mindful that we have a limited time on this earth before we stand before God face to face, let’s remember another quote from St. Augustine, written after his own heartfelt conversion: “Late am I in loving you, O Beauty ever Ancient, ever New, late have I loved you!” Though we have been far from God, though we have sinned, it is not too late to return to him with our whole hearts. Now is a very acceptable time for repentance.